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Sleep it is a gentle thing

A new study has confirmed what the Gleeson family already knows: melatonin helps autistic kids sleep.

The study is the largest of its kind, looking at the medical records of 107 children with autism, ages 2-18, who had tried varying dosages of melatonin for insomnia. Twenty-five percent of parents reported they no longer had sleep concerns after using melatonin, 60 percent of parents reported the sleep problems had improved, 13 percent still had major concerns and only 1 percent (one child) had worse symptoms. Only three of the 107 children studied reported mild side effects.

We’re in the 25% camp. Bede, who will be five next month, takes half of a 1mg tablet of melatonin every night and has since July of 2007 and I can say it has literally changed our lives. He used to be awake until 2AM or later four to five nights out of the week, still rising for the day around 8, with no nap. Now we give him his melatonin around 10:45PM and he is asleep by 11. Sean is the bedtime guy around here and it was like to killing him. No more!

4 thoughts on “Sleep it is a gentle thing”

I blogged about this last night on a couple of my other blogs – my daughter is in the 25% camp as well. My son is in the 60% – sleep has improved but still inadequate. It is still improvement though! 🙂